Saturday, March 11, 2017

When News Was News Week: Face The Nation (1954)

CBS' Face The Nation has been on the air for 62 years and counting (doesn't turn 63 until November). Like NBC's Meet The Press, it expanded from 30 minutes to a full hour, with that expansion taking place in 2012. And that begs to ask. Why expand at all?

The simple reason is that for network news programs of this caliber, 30 minutes is not enough anymore. Nation still covers the hot button political topics du jour. Current moderator John Dickerson recently spoke out against the media's obssessive-compulsive coverage of current President Donald Trump, likening the "hysterical" coverage to that of meteorologists forecasting incoming major storms in certain areas.

Ah, but let's go back to a simpler time. This October 1960 episode, one of the last moderated by Stuart Novins, has three men interviewing soon-to-be Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Unlike Press and yesterday's subject, Issues & Answers, I have not seen enough of Nation to warrant a rating.

2 comments:

The moderator in 1960 was Stuart Novins, a long-term CBS News standby.(I know that the sound on these kinescopes is chancy, but there are reference books around ...)

And by the way - - the current Face the Nation moderator is John Dickerson.If you're old enough, you might remember his mother, Nancy Dickerson; she was on NBC at about the same time as Stuart Novins was on CBS ... ... or maybe you're not ...